UPDATE: Rereading the New Criticism (4/15/06; MSA; 10/19/06-10/22/06)

full name / name of organization:

John McIntyre

contact email:

jmcintyre@upei.ca

New deadline:

Rereading the New Criticism

Commentators such as Gerald Graff and Mark Jancovich have noted that, sincethe demise in the 1960s of the New Critical hegemony, contemporary criticaldiscourse has often promoted misunderstandings of New Critical projects.The image of the New Criticism as ahistorical formalism, they suggest,misrepresents the New Critics' commitment to practices and epistemologiesdistinctive to literature; their engagement with social and historicalissues; and their cultural politics. These recent critiques encouragerereading the work of the New Critics from a new perspective-one thatmaintains critical distance on received ideas about their methods.

Any such rereading of the New Criticism has significant implications formodernist studies, given how much contemporary understandings of modernismowe to the work of the New Critics: as they established themselves inAmerican universities at mid-century, the New Critics played a vital role inbringing what we now regard as modernist literature to prominence,legitimizing it as an area for scholarly study and shaping its reception.The histories of the New Criticism and modernism are so intertwined that werisk confusing the cultural stances of the moderns themselves with those ofthe critics who featured them. This panel's premise is that the NewCriticism forms a crucial part of the "archives" of our profession, as wellas those of modernism; and that renewed contact with the work of the NewCritics can yield valuable insights into both the profession and moderniststudies.

We invite papers that revisit the work of the New Critics from acontemporary angle. Rather than rehabilitate the New Critics, we aim tofacilitate new encounters with their claims and methods, as well as with thecultural milieu that conditioned their endeavours. We also invite newconsiderations of the relevance that their work might have today to thecriticism of literature and of cultural texts more broadly. How might thework of Ransom, Brooks, Tate, Wellek, and Warren speak to us today in afield whose identity and practices were importantly shaped by theirprofessional projects? What might they have to say to us as critics ofmodernism specifically? How might we now view the oft-cited link betweenmodernism and New Criticism, in light of recent developments withinmodernist studies? Resisting constructions of the New Criticism ashomogenous, our panel will instead highlight the divergent perspectiveswithin what was a broadly constituted critical field.

Topics might include, but are not limited to --New Critical claims about how to address literature asliterature --New Critical assertions about the kinds of knowledge uniquelyavailable through literature --New Critical pedagogical methods --the relationship between New Critical practice and theassumptions, methodologies, and analytical methods associated with thedomain of science --the relationship between the New Critics and their culturalenvironment --the cultural politics of the New Critics --the role of the New Critics in the "Rise of English" --the impact of New Critical methods and readings onunderstandings of modernism --the New Criticism's place in the institutional archive --modernism's response[s] to the New Critics

Please send 500-word abstracts along with a brief cv to Miranda Hickman(miranda.hickman_at_mcgill.ca) or John McIntyre (jmcintyre_at_upei.ca) by April 15,2006.